I used to be a daycare teacher. I took care of toddlers, preschoolers and supervised a school-age site. I also have worked with parents for a number of years and yet I was surprised at how unprepared parents are when they begin looking for care. In general, parents don't know much about early childhood education theories and so they tend to trust the "experts" in the form of daycare directors and teachers. While certainly many professionals in child care have great instincts, good education and sound beliefs about early childhood education, many others do not. And letters after their names don't always indicate someone who has wisdom when it comes to caring for kids. Besides which, there are many schools of thought when it comes to how children need to be "educated" (cared for), some way outside the mainstream. Most parents didn't know they had a number of options when it came to educational philosophies.
Another concern was that most of the parents chose to believe that their child care situation was a very good one -- that their child care provider knew exactly what she was doing. I know anecdotally and from looking at the research that most daycare isn't even adequate. One study says that 9 out of 10 institutional centers are inadequate.
Who can fault parents for not knowing? Magazines, newspapers and the rest of the media are so worried about making working parents feel guilty (oh shades of breastfeeding!) that they deny them the information they need and deserve to make good decisions about how to care for their children.
Studies abound that "prove" that daycare doesn't hurt kids, that it even helps some at-risk, and headlines love to trumpet the news. "Don't worry!" they say, "It's fine!" But is it? What the headlines fail to explain is that the studies are limited. Usually based on lower-income, at-risk kids who are placed in high quality care. Now remember, high quality care is hard to find, there's that one in ten number. Wouldn't the newspaper space be better devoted to telling parents what high-quality care looks like? It's a lot more than "low ratio" and "first aid/cpr training for each teacher" as certain mainstream parenting magazines might have us believe. If parents knew what was considered superior care, they could find it or demand it; they could be informed consumers.
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